Xiaomi continues to reign supreme in Chinese market

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi continued to dominate the country's smart phone market as two of the company's models topped the sales charts in the third quarter.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi continued to dominate the country's smartphone market as two of the company's models topped the sales charts in the third quarter.

The company secured 30.3% of the market share in China, followed by Samsung with an 18.4% share in three months ending September, UK-based market research company Kantar Worldpanel Comtech said yesterday.

Xiaomi shipped 18 million units of smartphones in the third quarter, an increase of 18% from the previous quarter, the company's founder and CEO Lei Jun recently posted on his Sina Weibo microblog, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

For the first nine months, Xiaomi, whose name translates into the grain 'millet', shipped a total of 44 million units, he said.

The company's Red Rice 1S and Rice Note models have topped the sales charts in China during the third quarter.

The company was founded in April 2010 by Lei and his friends in Zhongguancun, Beijing's technology hub, dubbed as China's Silicon Valley.

Earlier another global market researcher International Data Corporation (IDC) said in a report that Xiaomi jumped into the top 5 manufacturers list for the first time thanks to its focus on China and adjacent markets, which resulted in triple-digit year-over-year growth.

In the third quarter of this year, Xiaomi's global market share stood at 5.3%, following Samsung's 23.8% and Apple's 12%, according to IDC.

The key to Xiaomi's success was the launch of its Mi4 smartphone in August, which was positioned as a high-end alternative to the status quo, it said.

'What remains to be seen is how quickly the company can move beyond its home territories to drive volumes higher,' the report said.

Earlier the company was in news for migrating data of its non-Chinese customers from its servers in Beijing to Amazon AWS data centres in California (US) and Singapore.

Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel and their families had been asked not to use the company's 'Xiaomi Redmi 1s' phones on the grounds of security risk.

Xiaomi had said it was migrating some data on non-Chinese customers away from its servers in Beijing due to performance and privacy considerations.